


At The End Of The World

by Krasimer



Series: Terrible Truths (Secrets Long Held) [1]
Category: The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Genre: Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fornicus is kind of scary, Ghosts, M/M, Marty has problems, Merpeople, Post-Apocalypse, Survival, Survival Horror, Werewolves, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 15:05:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16200008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: Somehow, he woke up at the end of the world.(They’d been too busy running for their lives, too busy trying to get out and figure out what was going on. The only things that had wanted them dead had been the guards they’d come across, not the monsters.Never the monsters.)





	At The End Of The World

Somehow, he woke up at the end of the world.

Marty shuddered and twitched as he sat up, his breath coming in short bursts as he grabbed randomly at whatever he could touch. He’d been sitting on the steps, smoking his last joint with Dana as she bled out, and a giant arm had shot up from the hole he’d shoved the Director down.

The building had crumbled and the ground had shook and he’d been knocked unconscious.

But now he was awake at the end of the world, his entire body aching like he’d been slammed against several walls in a row. The events of their last friend vacation catching up to him, probably. It had been a long day and an even longer night and there’d been about zero minutes to even so much as close his eyes while trying to avoid monsters and nightmares that had wanted to rip his skin off.

Or eat his soul or his heart or just stab him or set him on fire– the point was, it had been a lot happening all at once.

Dana’s body, when he managed to sit up and see where her blood had stained the steps, was gone. From the marks on the floor, she’d been dragged off, probably some monster’s meal. Strangely, despite the broken walls and the blood on the floor, the room was almost untouched. Mostly, it still looked as it had when he’d gone unconscious, except that Dana was gone.

Marty pulled himself up and leaned against the chunk of wall that had once been the side of the staircase. Taking a full, deep breath, he rubbed his hands down his face.

The world had gone to shit and he was stone cold sober.

The rest of his stash had been in the cabin or in the Rambler – nothing remained, in all likelihood, and it wasn’t like he could walk down to a store or find a dealer or whatever. The world had fucking ended and he was, seemingly, one survivor in a wasteland of nothingness. Stuck in the remains of a building that had belonged to the people who had slated him and his best friends for death.

He wanted to scream.

He wanted to kick and scream and snarl at the world and the unfairness of it all – he was alone, he had lost all of his friends, and he’d been one of the people to bring about the end of everything. If they had just listened to him in the cellar, during the party, at any moment…

Groaning, Marty leaned against the wall as he stood up.

Dana had held his hand as they had waited for death to come up to meet them and then he’d fucked it up by passing out before it had reached them. Dana was dead, Curt was dead, Jules and Holden and probably every single other person he’d ever met because he hadn’t wanted to die just for the sake of an old system. Why the fuck had they been chosen? It wasn’t fair, wasn’t right, there’d been no consent in it for them.

Just ugly death and nightmares parading around in an elaborate system.

He wasn’t sure if he was thinking about the monsters or the people who had been running everything.

The seasick feeling he’d been dealing with returned for a moment, the disconnect between the walls and the floors setting his stomach on a new obstacle course. Marty tried to blink away the dizziness he felt but he couldn’t, could barely even keep his eyes open now.

As he dropped back into unconsciousness, he thought he heard footsteps.

 

X

 

This time, when he woke up, it was to the feeling of hands in his hair.

They weren’t moving, just sitting on his head with fingers tangled in the blood-matted strands, but it was almost enough to think everything had just been a weird dream. A nightmare he’d wake up from and sit up to see Curt and Holden and Jules and Dana. As much of a crush as he’d had on Dana, he’d had a little bit of one on Curt too, and seeing them would have been the biggest relief in his life.

But when he moved, the hands tightened their grip and he clenched his eyes even tighter. The longer he could avoid seeing whatever it was that had their hands on him, the better.

Cold fingers moved from his hair to his cheek and stroked gently.

Something rough brushed his neck, dragging across the edge of a cut that had only just started to heal. That turned out to be too much and Marty hissed, his eyes flying open in a motion he couldn’t control. The room was the same as it had been, untouched by anything except the nightmares that had lived within it, excepting the things he and Dana had brought with them.

But he knew something had to have changed; his unknown companion was still stroking his cheek.

With some effort, Marty sat up and pulled away from whatever had it’s hands on him and looked back. There, sitting with neatly folded legs and a blank expression, was one of the monsters he’d seen in the elevator. With saw blades through it’s head and barbed wire wrapped around the muscled arms, skin as white as paper and black leather making it even paler, the monster simply stared back at him as if he was the weird one.

The expression it wore was blank, neutral and seemingly uncaring, but the eyes were almost begging him for something.

The thing had been holding a puzzle box, a twin to the one Curt had been fucking around with in the cellar. Swallowing the panicked scream that wanted to escape him, Marty leaned back on his heels and perched in a position he might be able to stand up and run from. “What the fuck,” he muttered, eyeing the monster over.

Dana had seen it right, before.

Oh, he might have guessed the plot, might have known, might have seen, but Dana had said something even more important. Had _asked_ something more important.

_‘Why aren’t they interested in us?’_

At the time, he’d had no answer for her. They’d been too busy running for their lives, too busy trying to get out and figure out what was going on. The only things that had wanted them dead had been the guards they’d come across, not the monsters.

Never the monsters.

Things had gotten aggressive, the dragonbat had hissed at them once it had decided they were in it’s territory, but nothing else had actively tried to attack them.

But now, however, he’d woken up to his head being held by a creature he’d seen with a crew of others like it. Something like that suggested sentience. The hands in the hair was a common human comfort thing. Marty wobbled as he tried to stay upright, bracing himself by putting a hand down on the floor. “What the fuck…” he muttered again. There was a ringing in his ears, a soft and distant noise like a faint church bell.

_You are being made ready for me._

The words dropped into his brain like a battering ram through a cheap door and Marty flinched back. “What?!”

_Your mind is not ready yet._

The beseeching eyes darkened for a second, as if willing Marty to understand. He didn’t want to understand, everything had been weird enough as it was.

_You should not be awake. You are being made ready for me and I have come to claim._

“That’s fuckin’ neat and all,” Marty leaned back on his hands, feeling his arms trembling as he tried his best to stay upright. “But I don’t think I want to be ‘ _made ready_ ’ for you!”

With slow movements, like black ink poured into water, the monster slid off the steps. In less than a second, it had crossed the space Marty had put between them like it was nothing. Two hands, one encased in leather and the other wrapped in barbed wire, reached out to steady him, to run slowly and almost gently over his shoulders and neck and face.

_You were left alone in the Great Release for reasons of claim. You should still be sleeping._

“Yeah, okay, sure!” Marty coughed a couple of times, then fell onto his ass. “Sure! I’ll sleep in the nightmare-filled world that I brought the _apocalypse_ into! I certainly feel safe enough to sleep here!”

The hand with the leather arm-covering caught his chin and those dark eyes met his. Up close, he could see that they resembled shark eyes; dark and fathomless, no color beyond black. Meeting those eyes made him feel steadied for the first time since the nightmare had begun. The seasickness, lingering and unpleasant, disappeared.

_I will keep you safe. It is my duty to you._

For a minute, Marty’s body vibrated with a want. The wanting of safety, of comfort and warmth and being held close that those words implied.

The monster spoke of duty to him like that was something it had been waiting for. Like it had just needed to be released and find him and that was the best outcome of everything that had happened. His mind dropped into static again and he drifted out of his own body for a second.

When he managed to drag himself back out of that state, his breath caught and he forced himself to stop walking towards the creature wrapped in leather.

_Why do you resist what you crave? You were made for this, chosen and bred and I have claimed you._

“Fuck,” Marty shook his head, hearing something crashing around outside. One of the bigger monsters, he had to assume, maybe even the giant-ass god things he and Dana had released. The creature in front of him was right. In a creepy way, in some small and primal part of his mind, he wanted to be right there with this monster.

Wanted to be claimed and held and kept safe from the nightmares surrounding him.

He knew that, a few hours ago, he would have been horrified at himself. Would have been terrified of what was coming and disgusted with the way his mind was urging him towards the only source of comfort he’d had in the end of the world.

The comfort that came at the hands of a monster.

“What do I call you?” Marty almost gagged on the words. “I mean…Is there a fucking name I call you? Are you something that shouldn’t be named? If there’s something I call you, it just makes this easier for me.”

_I am Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain. You are safer in my company._

“Safer, huh?”

_Come._

Fornicus stood up, extending a hand for Marty to take.

_If you will not continue to rest, your allies are waiting. We must find them._

Marty stared at the hand being offered, the dead-white color of it, the black leather wrapped skin-tight around it. He wondered what was under the leather, what the skin beneath might look like.

He wondered how the fuck he’d gotten here.

With a deep breath, Marty took the hand being offered to him and nodded. “If I have allies out there, I think I’m gonna need them,” he nodded again. He could only watch as Fornicus’s other hand grabbed something from the floor, offering that to Marty as well. “What?”

_Keeper of the Puzzle, I have claimed you as such._

He took it, holding it curled close to his chest. If this was how the rest of his life was going to be, post-apocalypse, he was just going to have to get used to it.

 

X

The world outside the room was an abnormally dark place.

The first choked breaths she pulled in as she lay there were difficult, despite how much of her broken body had healed. There was a primal urge to scream, to lash out at whatever came too close, to rip and pull and tug and claw.

Her hands curled into crumpled things, barely recognizable as hands at first. When she looked at them, she knew the shape of them even so.

Dana.

Her name was Dana.

Dana Elizabeth Polk, twenty-one years old, a college student, her parents’ only daughter. She had an older brother who’d gone to live a few states away from their parents, while she’d gone the other direction for school.

She took another breath and her back arched as her body filled with oxygen and her mind started racing from the starting point she’d managed to give herself. Her friends were on a weekend trip with her, none of them had survived. She hadn’t survived, attacked by a nightmarish creature she’d only ever seen in horror movies before. A werewolf – an _actual werewolf_ – had ripped into her and torn bits of her apart. She had managed to drag herself to sit on some steps with Marty as the world ended.

They had smoked pot together as they spoke about the end of the world.

Dana’s head lolled to one side as she heard the sound of footsteps coming closer. She recognized them, this time, knew they belonged to the werewolf that had bitten her.

She knew it just as she knew that she reeked of blood and sweat, cold-fear and anger. Somewhere out there, she could smell Marty and she knew she would have to find whatever might be left of him. She couldn’t survive the end of the world and not give burial rites for one of her best friends.

The approaching footsteps grew lighter and Dana looked up to see an entirely naked woman standing above her, patches of fur receding over her shoulders and hips. “You’re the one who bit me,” Dana muttered. “Nice set of teeth you’ve got there.”

“If it helps,” the woman’s voice was deep, a comforting bass of noise. “I am also the one who pulled you from the Room of Nightmares.” She crouched down, seemingly without caring about her nudity. “I am Sasha. Your wounds are healing well,” she reached out to trail her fingers along Dana’s chest, eyes focused entirely on the bloodied edges. “You are?”

“Dana,” Dana twitched a hand, wincing at the shock of pain it sent through her body. “I’d shake your hand…”

“Ah,” Sasha seemed to smile for a second. “A sense of humor helps to survive anything.” She grabbed Dana’s chin gently, turning her head this way and that. “As does a healing factor that isn’t human.”

“You called something the Room of Nightmares?”

Sasha leaned back on her heels, frowning. Her hair was a blood-matted mess but Dana was willing to bet it was almost-black underneath the gore. “The room you were in, the one the giant gods came from,” she raised an eyebrow. “Tell me if you can think of another, better name for it. I tried, but…” she sighed and shook her head. “I had to leave the boy that was with you. There was a black mark on his arm when I tried to move him—A mark I know only too well, I know who it came from.”

“Marty’s alive?” Dana gasped in surprise, then in pain as the movement dragged at her wounds.

“If that is his name,” Sasha reached out to put a palm against her chest, pushing her back to the ground with an effortless strength. “Though if he has died since then, I do not know. The black mark is the mark of Fornicus, the Lord of Bondage and Pain. Some of the others, the ones that can speak, have been speaking of Fornicus finding a match.” She swallowed roughly, turning her head so she had to look at Dana out of the corner of her eye. “A mate.”

Dana nodded, letting the subject drop for now. She hurt too much to think of anything far beyond her current position in the world.

But she would find Marty.

If anything remained to be found.

 

X

 

Head injuries were such small things, in the grand scheme.

He knew that now, as surely as he knew how to breathe in the water that surrounded him. The scythe that had gone through his head and his neck was at the bottom of the lake, already rusting away into nothing. He had triumphed, had become more than the monster that had killed him. The lake had filled his lungs and when he had woken up from death, others like him had been waiting in the water.

He would look like them in time, they had said, pressing their hands to his face and neck and skull.

Stemming the pain, pushing water into his lungs. They almost hadn’t been able to claim him, they had said, patting gently at his shoulders. He had almost been killed outright by the monster who had been hidden in the back of the Rambler.

But you’re ours, they had said. One of us.

They were those who had died in the water, betrayed or lost or broken or all three at once. They were those who had taken to the waves as easily as breathing.

Pushed from ships or dropped off cliffs, some even throwing themselves into the sea. Some for refuge, some as protest, some as their final act of defiance. They had all come to live in the sea, in the water, wherever the water _was_. He had nodded along with them and when he had managed to speak, he had asked about his friends.

The others had trilled, delighted.

There is something _new_ happening, they had said. Your friends are our friends, though they are not of our world.

Something inside of him had been delighted at that.

When he had been human, when he had been alive, he had been a scholar. The Scholar. The type to study and learn, to know for the sake of knowing. Those who lived beneath the waves were not like the gentle fairytales he had read all his life.

They were corpses, bloated and grey, with jaws that had stretched to swallow any unfortunate person who came too close.

He would look like them, one day, they had said.

He just needed to give it time.

The body that had once been Holden McCrae had grinned with a viciousness in his eyes that he’d never had in life. He had been brought back, in a way, but only after a nightmare crafted by those who had kept the others caged. His friends, murdered all around him, stripped away from the mortal coil by those who would have him bound.

Come with us, they had said.

Join us, they had said.

Avenge them, their teeth had flashed in the darkness of the water, we will help you.

Holden had only been able to swim after them, pulled into the protective heart of the pod of merpeople. They had been kept, captive and separate, in their own tanks for far too long.

And now they would have revenge on those who had kept them there.

Their mission had become his mission and his had become theirs’. He needed it more than he had once needed air – They were out there, somewhere, he knew they had to be. The evil in the cabin had tainted all of them, had bound all of them to a future that hadn’t been foreseen by the puppeteers.

He would find Dana first, though, would search for Curt until he found out what had happened to his body.

Holden drifted through the darkness of the lake, nearing the shore where he had gone swimming with his friends only several hours earlier. The water tasted better than pure, now, it tasted like every amazing food he’d ever had.

He was growing to like his new life, he decided as he hauled himself partially out of the water and clinging to the dock. One of the others, one of the newer ones, joined him, their hands trailing through the length of water-logged black trailing from their head.

He would look like them, someday.

 

X

 

She had become a bride of sorts after all.

She’d imagined being married so many times, had been drawn to the dressmaker’s dummy with the beautiful white dress on it, but she hadn’t lived to see herself become a living bride.

So she’d become a dead one.

Finding her head had been easy enough. Plucking the immaterial and vaporous version of it from the corpse had been trickier, but she had managed it. The clothing she had brought with her to the cabin that had spelled out their deaths, that was easy enough as well. Finding it had been no great feat –

It had been right where she’d left it.

She’d picked through the clothing with her head on the bed beside the suitcases, glancing over every article and deciding which she’d like to put to use. She’d heard horror stories, watched movies about brides who had been killed before their weddings, and she decided she fit in with them in a way. The Beheaded Lover had a nice ring to it.

Her clothes hovered on the surface of her and she smoothed her hands down them, admiring the way her skirt flipped and flared as she twisted this way and that.

It was as if she’d woken up knowing what had happened to her and had already come to terms with it.

Picking up her head, she smoothed her hair out, grabbing her brush and gently running it through the strands. The blood was unremovable, but she could make it neater. The blonde had been a good color for her, she decided.

The red suited her so much better.

She held her head above where it had once been attached, admiring the effect of the red of her hair against the clothes she had chosen. Somewhere out there, she could feel, was the one she’d brought the clothing along for. She knew he was out there, could feel the connection between them as surely as if they’d been tied together.

For a moment, she remembered writing, ‘Curt and Jules forever!’ on something. He had agreed to it, had laughed and picked her up and spun in a circle. He’d once hinted at having a ring tucked away for her.

Jules looked at herself in the mirror, immaterial and alone, and nodded.

She was a ghost now, could remember her death and the horror of it, but that didn’t mean she needed to stop loving him. Or that she couldn’t go find him. Curt had outlived her, but that only meant she needed to go find him.

Tucking her head under one arm, arranged carefully so that she could see, Jules nodded once more.

She would go find Curt and any of her other friends that she could.

With her plans decided, she wandered through the rest of the cabin, taking in the damage and the blood splatters. Her head was in here, after all, appeared to have been thrown a couple of times. The broken windows and doors spoke of a fight she’d been kept away from.

How many of her friends had died here?

Marty’s room was the worst. She could see handprints on the windowsill, a testament to how he had struggled to stay inside. Holden’s room was the second-worst; she found a room of nightmarish tools and weapons, stained dark with ancient blood. If she could have smelled it, it might have once made her gag.

She left the Black Room quickly.

Dana’s room was connected to Holden’s, the hidden observation window smashed. One of them had gone through it to the other. They had gone to each other, for comfort or for safety, and Jules had to smile at that.

They hadn’t been alone, then.

If she had stayed alive, she might have been able to help them. Pre-med, after all. Looking back on her behavior was upsetting – something had been altering her, changing her mind and making her stupid. Whatever had happened, she must have been slipped something.

Jules drifted out the door of the cabin as she thought about it.

Whoever had drugged her would pay for it.

With their lives, if they had to.

 

X

 

Everything was burning.

The pain had, actually, outlived the flesh. The scent of burning meat wafted through the air as he dragged himself out of the canyon, a herald of his presence. His limbs were broken mockeries of the life he’d once lived, the strength he’d once carried himself with.

His one remaining eye stared with a singular focus as he dragged himself up the steep rocks. The going was slow, the journey dangerous, but he didn’t need to worry about danger anymore.

Without knowing how, he knew that he’d been changed.

The cabin—

A fleeting memory of a cousin, of an offer to let him and his friends stay—

Had altered him.

There had been something in it, some evil soaked into the wood like a varnish, tainting every breath he’d taken and ripping apart their futures. His love, his beautiful girlfriend, the light of his life—he’d seen her die. Ripped apart in front of him by a group of shambling masses of rotting flesh. Zombies, ones that had believed in pain and torture so much that they had become as such to keep going at it.

And now here he was. A shambling mass of flesh – but not one of them. Not one of the things that had murdered Jules.

Never one of them.

He could remember how sunshine felt on his skin, the soul-deep warmth of it, but he could also remember the spark and flash of bright blue as it had torn him apart. Heat could be a friend or a foe.

He could feel the burning underneath his skin, could see the still-glowing nerves that poked out from underneath what remained of him.

He had been Curt, once, but that was all that remained for him. His last name was gone, the subjects he’d studied in school were gone, his major and his minor and his teachers – all gone. Everything that had once been near and dear to him, everything that had once been so _important_ , was just gone.

Except for Jules.

Her smile, her laugh, the way her nose would crinkle when something had amused her. The way her voice would go sleep-rough in the mornings they’d spent together. He’d been planning on proposing, he remembered that. They’d only been together a year or so, but he’d known. She was it, for him, the one he’d wanted to spend his life with.

He shambled along, finally making the last few inches up the cliff disappear under his progress.

They might still be here, somewhere. His friends.

Jules was gone, ripped apart by something that’d had no place in the real world. Zombies, actual fucking zombies, wandering around in reality like they belonged there.

Like he actually belonged there.

Curt groaned as he landed on solid ground, dragging himself along with the bloodied fingers that remained on his hands. He was missing a pinky, looked like a bird might have gotten to it. A couple other fingers were pecked at, but mostly whole.

His friends had had the Rambler, might have been able to find a way to get out.

He sat on the ground for a while, his eye opening and closing like he was blinking. They might have been able to survive the nightmare. Marty was dead, Jules was dead, he just hoped Dana and Holden had gotten out alive.

They might be able to build a life together.

If they had survived, they would be the only ones who knew what they had gone through. It would, in all likelihood, tie them together in a way that couldn’t be undone. He’d watched Dana and Holden grow closer in the time they’d spent together, he hoped they could have something.

Suddenly, like a breeze had picked up a strong scent and blown it into his face, he could smell _her._ The soft scent of the shampoo she used, the perfume he’d bought her for her birthday. The scent wafted over him, blowing back the burning-flesh scent of him. It felt like her hands running through his hair, her shriek as he’d playfully tossed her into the water, throwing himself in after her, the way she’d clung to him and eventually laughed.

At the edge of the trees, he could see something glowing.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, Krasimer, you’ve got so many things in progress! What’re you going to work on next? Your Hobbit fanfic? Your Outlast fic?
> 
> Hmm, I don’t know. How about an AU ending of a horror movie that came out six years ago.
> 
> Seriously, you guys. I am a ridiculous person and I have plans. Cabin In The Woods has got to have a fanbase somewhere, right? 
> 
> Right?
> 
> Anyway. The dead kids got turned into monsters and the living ones did too. Marty will eventually be a member of Fornicus’s gang, claimed as the Lord’s “Bride”. I’ve been idly thinking about this AU for a while but I didn’t start actually working on it until just a bit ago, when I purchased and read-through the novelization. I’m actually really proud of the merpeople-being-bloated-corpses idea, even though it came from the weird as hell design Whedon used in the movie.
> 
> Seriously, what was that?
> 
> Anyway. If you guys liked this, let me know? I’m debating writing more, but I would like to know if people are actually reading it.


End file.
